


Teen Gods

by krazieLeylines



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Domestic Fluff, Everyone Is Alive, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Human/Troll Society, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Polyamory, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-30 07:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3928378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krazieLeylines/pseuds/krazieLeylines
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Told in the pov's of Jade Harley and Gamzee Makara, this post-sburb/sgrub fic is basically just pure wish fulfillment, with lots of romantic shenanigans, as the various teen gods learn to live normalish lives on a reborn Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. And Boom Goes The Tumor

JADE HARLEY

The last few hours of the game were finally upon them, and now they had to plan their escape. Not that any of them had to rush; once everyone on their party had gone god tier and Lord English had been slain by Dave and Lady Calliope, well, there was nothing left to fear. 

Jane had left to the dream bubbles with Aradia, to help revive alpha timeline’s ghosts, if she could find them. John had sent Roxy, Rose and Kanaya to the Ectobiology Lab within the Veil, so that they could send the matriorb to Earth in place of slime babies, a few tens of thousands of years before John’s baby self had arrived, to ensure there would be plenty of time for the trolls to grow alongside the human race.

Dave had left with John to give him assistance with navigating through the timelines, and that left Jade to wait, and to watch over Dirk and Nepeta as they peeled Equius and what was left of Karkat’s old friend, Gamzee, free from Lord English. Her job was crucial, but it had to wait until the final moment.

It was a spectacle to watch, seeing Dirk and Nepeta pull the souls from the hulking mass of the monster. Pink energy sizzled, appearing to light the air itself on mystic fire. It was a slow, process, though. Jade smoothed her thumb over the wallet she was clutching in her right palm, as if ensuring herself that it was still there. 

Once everyone was reunited, John was going to take everyone to the post-scratch troll’s session, to escape through the door to Earth before Jack had a chance to intervene. That was the plan, and even though nothing stood in its way, Jade was nervous. She wasn’t sure if she thought it wasn’t going to work, or if perhaps she didn’t like the idea of her staying behind. It would only be for a second, to plant the Tumor in the core of the game, before escaping herself. It would certainly work, Rose had assured her, but even so Jade couldn’t help but fear what would happen if she was tardy.

“Jaaade?”

A soft, mewling voice startled Jade from her thoughts. Although Jade had only just met the recently revived Nepeta face to face, she already found herself liking the small, energetic troll. “Jade,” Nepeta called over to her again once she saw she got her attention, “There seems to be a purroblem!”

Jade rushed forward, seeing what appeared to be half a severed corpse on the ground in front of Nepeta. Dirk was to the side, trying to seperate Equius, AR, and the kernelsprite with apparent difficulty.

“I don’t know what we did wrong,” Nepeta lamented, “Did I only grab half of his soul?” She was looking at Jade with the biggest eyes she had ever seen, and Jade didn’t know enough about heart powers to answer her question.

With a loud crackle and pop, Equius broke free of the kernelsprite, tumbling to the ground. Nepeta rushed over to tackle-hug the large, sweat-covered troll, her frazzled tail broadcasting her unsettled mood. Equius’s expression was extremely out of it, but he managed to flop an arm over Nepeta’s back and pull her closer to him.

It was silent for a moment save for Nepeta whispering to Equius, until: “Karkat said not to make a big deal out of it if we couldn’t save the clown,” Dirk spoke up, glancing sideways at Jade.

“Still—” Jade began, before a loud moaning startled all four of them.

With upmost horror, Jade stared as Gamzee’s fingers began to twitch, his one eye swiveling around in its socket in what looked like an attempt to survey its surroundings. Again, the clown made a sound – nothing really human, but animalistic, and undeniably conveying pain.

“He’s… alive,” Dirk marveled with a thick layer of disgust in his voice, tightening his hand on his blade’s handle. “Maybe we should… put him out of his misery?”

Gamzee made another sound at that. Was it one of protest, or just another groan of pain? Was he capable of understanding what was going on around him, with only half of his brain left? His fingers continued to spasm, not really reaching for anything that Jade could see. It was obvious he shouldn’t have still been alive, even by troll standards. It would be… cruel, to let Gamzee continue to writhe in pain until they blew the game up, which could take up to an hour, depending on how long it took for everyone to get back from their individually assigned tasks and assemble back together.

But Jade didn’t want any more dead kids. And besides, she had gotten close to Karkat the past couple of weeks, and she knew he would miss Gamzee dearly, even if he thought Gamzee was past saving.

And maybe Gamzee _was_ past saving, but they’d never know if they left him here for his exploded remains to rot within deep space for the rest of eternity, would they? Jade weighed the options in her head, but she knew her heart had already decided on sticking with the plan, and letting Gamzee tag along. 

“We’ll just have to wait for Jane to return,” Jade told Dirk, “and she can put him back together, good as new.”

Nepeta looked up from having her face buried in Equius’s chest, and gave a heavy sigh. “I just hope there’s still part of the old Gamzee left in there. He used to be such a good furiend.”

“There is.” That was Equius, and Jade remembered that he had been stuck inside the same body as Gamzee for quite a long time, and perhaps they should have considered asking him for his opinion sooner. “It is… an excruciatingly long tale, which I will be more than happy to share with everyone, down to the minutest of details, once we are all reunited. But until then, do refrain from passing judgement on the high… er, on Gamzee.”

Gamzee’s eye kept swirling, as though trying to pinpoint where Equius’s voice was coming from. Jade looked away from the body, feeling a tad sick to her stomach from looking at him for so long.

“Hopefully Jane will be back soon,” was all Jade could think to say.

\--

GAMZEE MAKARA

The next ten minutes ticked by like long, bitter years for Gamzee, who could think of nothing but the blinding agony that gripped his being. He thought he heard Equius’s voice somewhere, but he could have been hallucinating it. He thought maybe he was in hell.

There was a bright light, then, and Gamzee didn’t hurt anymore. There wasn’t even an echo of what had been, as though it had simply been erased.

Jane stood over Gamzee. At least, he thought it was Jane. It had been a long time since he had seen her, and that was when he was under the influences of… either Aranea or that puppet, Lil Cal. He couldn’t remember which one. Maybe both of them had been battling for his agency at that point in his life. It had been so long ago since he had had his own body, all to himself. 

Nobody was in his head now, either. There was a surprising lack of noise in his think pan, and Gamzee didn’t know how to deal with it for a long moment. Nothing was compelling him to do anything. Anything he said, or anything he did, he would do with complete control over it.

It was too much responsibility to bear for Gamzee, who hadn’t experienced the luxury of free will for _sweeps_.

“Gamzee…?” That was Jane. Gamzee looked up at her when she said his name, a reflexive action. She looked… so afraid. Gamzee realized that she had every reason to fear him. He had been inside so many monsters.

“Yeah?” Gamzee didn’t know what to say. 

Jane seemed to be waiting for him to add onto his one-worded response, but when he stayed silent, she sucked in a breath. “We need to move,” she advised him, “Everyone is escaping to Earth while Jade plants the Tumor. I don’t know how long until she does.”

Gamzee was confused, but that in itself was almost a nostalgic emotion for him. It beat knowing everything about what he would become, about the things he would do, have to do, to complete the time loop.

When Jane held out a hand, Gamzee took it, and let her pull him to his feet. 

As they ran towards the transportalizer, Jane began to explain things to Gamzee, catching him up. She told him how she had brought everyone from their timeline in the dream bubbles back to life, and how she had to go searching with John for the other half of Gamzee’s body, because that she couldn’t revive him without it. She went on to mention how John had brought everyone else to the gateway to Earth, but then—

“You went back… for me?” Gamzee interrupted, timidly, “Not to be sounding all mother fuckin’ ungrateful, but… why?”

Jane looked over her shoulder and blinked at him, as if she had no clue how to answer him. Before she got the chance, they landed on the transportalizer together, and appeared a few feet from the large purple door. Gamzee recognized it instantly, and took a second to gawk. It was open, and John stood beside it.

“Hey, don’t just wait there! Jade’s already gone to plant the Tumor! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

Jane grabbed Gamzee’s arm, and shoved him towards the door, as if to give him a running start. Gamzee was good at following directions, though, so he didn’t pause for a second, and just kept sprinting towards the glow of the portal.

He leaped over the threshold, Jane a mere couple of inches behind him.

The earth hit Gamzee hard as he landed, and he tumbled through the dirt and grass, tasting the grittiness of it between his fangs. Once he stopped spinning, he opened his eyes to a brilliant blue sky, something he had only glimpsed a few times in the dream bubbles, and it had never seemed so vibrant before.

Jade rolled into Gamzee’s side, and then there was a muffled explosion.

“Sorry,” Jade apologized, pulling her elbow out of Gamzee’s side, but he didn’t care about the pain. He was laughing, hard and loud and full of relief and boundless joy.

He was free. They were all free.


	2. There's No Place Like Home

GAMZEE MAKARA

On this new Earth, the eight humans had never arrived on the meteors, so Jade and Jake’s island was empty. This gave Jade the perfect spot to unload her old house.

The island itself was overgrown with plants and wild grass. When Jade warped the group there, the first thing Gamzee noticed where all the bugs. Before long, his face was full of buzzing insects. He snorted, hoping not to get any up his nose, and followed after the others as they made their way to the front door.

“This way,” Dad Crocker led the way. He seemed like a good man, if awfully quiet, and Gamzee felt like he could trust him.

“Thanks,” Gamzee said as he passed the fatherly figure, and got an approving pat on the shoulder in return. Human adults were pretty damn cool, Gamzee thought.

Thankfully, Jade/Jake’s human hive was huge. There had to be at least twenty stories. The ground floor was the widest, by far, but it was full of junk that Gamzee had a difficult time not bumping into. Jade was ushering everyone into a block she called the “Grand Foyer”, captchaloguing a large amount of the junk as she entered. 

It certainly was grand, and Gamzee followed the others as they all congregated into the cozy room. 

There were so many people. The eight kids, and the twenty four trolls, and Dad Crocker, and some carapaces, and consorts, and maybe some other people – Gamzee was losing track of everyone in the crowd. He tried to keep as far back as possible, to avoid attracting attention. So far, no one seemed to want to interact with him. Any time he met someone’s eyes, they would jerk their gaze away.

Gamzee didn’t blame anyone but himself. So he stood back, and he watched, and he tried not to look for anyone in particular— as much as he wanted visual assurance that Karkat was alive and well.

Strangely enough, everyone was mostly silent, save for a few whispered conversations happening here and there. They must have been tired. Gamzee knew he was exhausted, too. So he sat down on the floor, and watched as Jade started a fire in the fireplace, and felt thankful he had been given a second chance.

Then, Jade instructed everyone to take a seat. “We have a lot to discuss,” she said, “Like, where we should go from here. But first, we should relax, and catch up.”

Rose offered a hand, and stood up. “Let’s see if we can’t make some food and refreshments for everyone, too. I packed my inventory chockfull of snacks and sandwiches I alchemized earlier. If you could grab us some bowls, cups and plates, Jade, I’m sure I’ll have more than enough to go around.”

Gamzee’s stomach grumbled at the mention of food.

“Good idea.” That was John, who was sharing the loveseat with Roxy. “I’m _starving_.” He rubbed his stomach for emphasis, and Roxy giggled.

Jade went off on a hunt for utensils as Rose requested, and Gamzee closed his eyes while he waited for food.

\--

Gamzee didn’t recall falling asleep. When he woke, someone was shaking his shoulder, and the clown blinked his eyes open with great hesitance. A sweet face smiled down at him.

Gamzee’s jaw went slack for a moment as he recognized her. “Calliope?” Gamzee didn’t remember everything from the game clearly. Most of it was nearly intangible, like it had been a dream. But seeing Calliope’s smile cleared some of the fog from his memory. She was just as beautiful as he remembered.

“You’re… Gamzee?” Calliope’s smile turned nervous. “You’re the troll that raised me and my brother. I… remember the shape of your horns. I know that’s silly to say, but.”

“Calliope.” Gamzee scrutinized her features, trying to figure out if she was afraid of him, the way everyone else seemed to be. She didn’t look away from him. “Calliope, yeah, motherfuck. I wasn’t all in the right state of mind when we got to meetin’ before, but yeah. You were just a wriggling little thing then. And now you’re all growed up.”

Calliope gave a soft, gentle laugh. “I’m far from an adult,” she corrected him, seemingly flattered by his words, “I turned twelve recently. I’m not even a teenager, technically.”

What a darling angel, Gamzee thought. He felt… he didn’t know the word. Protective, perhaps? He wanted to keep her safe, and he wanted to give her more reasons to smile. Gamzee moved to the side and motioned for her to sit beside him. “Well, fill me in on the decade or so I’ve been missin’ out on,” Gamzee said. His stomach gave another hollow sound, and he remembered his hunger. “Maybe over some lunch, er, dinner? Motherfuck… how exactly long was I out?”

“Not too long, I don’t think.” Calliope turned to one of the older trolls, and tapped her on the shoulder. The troll looked kind of like an older Terezi. Gamzee struggled to remember her name.

The older Pyrope passed a bowl of chips and a plate stacked with sandwiches to Calliope, just as Gamzee remembered.

“Latula!” Gamzee smiled at her. “Thanks, sis.”

Latula probably didn’t know about him, right? About his past, and what he had done? Gamzee couldn’t tell from her expression, partially hidden behind red shades as it was. Still, she nodded and gave a sincere sounding, “Not a thing, bro.”

Calliope placed the food before Gamzee. “I just finished eating,” she explained politely. 

It was probably rude to stuff one’s face in front of someone else. Gamzee thought Karkat had tried to teach him that one. But at that moment, he forgot his manners and his lessons, driven by what felt like an endless black hole that had replaced his protein sack. Gamzee stuffed his face with glee, between the pbj’s on the plate and the bowl of baby carrots. 

Calliope let him eat in silence. 

Halfway through the second sandwich, Gamzee slowed his pace, and began eating like a proper civilized troll. His stomach still hurt from hunger, but he didn’t want to make himself sick. Calliope asked Latula for a glass of water, and handed that to Gamzee to help wash his meal down with.

“Thanks a whole motherfuckin’ lot,” Gamzee said once he had downed the glass in two gulps. “Just what the clown up and needed.”

“Of course.” Calliope’s smile hadn’t faded at all. It was such a beautiful sight to behold. “I don’t know what you slept through, but it was decided that after we eat, we’re all going to pick rooms to claim as our own. Unless you want to leave and find your own place in the world, I guess. But for now, it’s probably best to stick together. I’ve been alone for so long, so having a large community of friends to share a home with… it’s nice.”

Gamzee felt a pang of guilt. “I’m wishing I could make your past less lonesome, Calliope. I really motherfuckin’ do. I had my own lusus, didn’t spend a whole lot of time ‘round me, either.”

“I appreciate that,” Calliope replied, looking in her lap, “But I know you had no choice in leaving. Let’s not complicate things by playing the blame game. The game had its ways of manipulating us all. And in the end, our choices were pre-determined. If you had managed to fight against my brother’s juju, and stayed to raise me, the timeline would have been doomed, anyway. In another timeline, that may have been the case. But that doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is what we do and say from here on out.”

Not everything Calliope said made perfect sense to Gamzee, but he understood and agreed with the gist of her words. “To starting over,” Gamzee said, and held out his hand. Calliope shook it. “Tell me everything.”

“Everything?” 

“Everything there is to all up and know about you,” Gamzee insisted, “Not all right now, of course. We’d be shooting the breeze ‘til we were both passing out from sleepiness.” He laughed, and was pleasantly surprised when Calliope laughed with him.

Calliope’s eyes sparkled when she laughed. Gamzee realized what he felt towards her was something Rose had described to him before. What had she called it? A maternal instinct? Something like that.

“Well,” Calliope began, in a shy tone, “I like to draw.”

\--

JADE HARLEY

Jade couldn’t remember ever being this full before. Her stomach was full of turkey and cheese sandwiches and Dirk’s fizzy orange soda and quite a bit of popcorn, too. She groaned at the mere thought of moving. “I ate too much,” she complained to the other girls, who were huddled around in earshot vicinity.

“You ate too quickly,” Rose pointed out, who was caught between nibbling on her own snack, and cuddling her rainbow drinker beau.

Jane popped a pretzel in her mouth and chewed. “This place is extraordinarily bigger than I imagined it when Jake described it,” she commented after she swallowed her bite, “I surely thought we’d have to be doubling up on rooms, but instead we could each claim two or three rooms per individual with plenty to spare!” 

“And that’s just the first few floors,” Jade added.

“At least we could hypothetically all live in this house together forever,” Roxy put in excitedly, “And, like, literally forever, since most of us are godtier, and Feferi can presumably extend people’s lifespans into eons, like her ancestor.” She paused, and went on. “Not that all of us will. We’ll all move on eventually, probably… but that’s really sad to think about! Especially since this is the first time we’re all together and not in imminent danger.”

Jade kind of had to agree with Roxy. “It’s not like we’re stuck on this island. I can easily connect transportalizers around the world so we can head into town for shopping, sight-seeing, and other cool activities. And everyone will be allowed to come back whenever they want! This will be like, the alpha home.”

“It’s weird to think about living forever, though,” Jane sat up straighter as she spoke, “I wonder if we’ll ever stop aging. I don’t want to wind up looking like Yoda a hundred years from now!”

That caused Jade to giggle, but only for a second before she considered the question seriously.

“Rose?” Kanaya said, a hint of hysteria in her voice, “Please assure me that we will not wind up as a pair of your human vinegar preserved cucumbers a century or two from now.”

Rose bit back a smile at her girlfriend’s mental image, and Jade had a hard time not doing the same, despite it all. “We would be the most adorable pair of elderly pickles, Kanaya. You cannot deny this fact. But if it puts you at ease to know, we will not physically age beyond our prime years. There are no dentures, rhino-esque wrinkles, or senior discounts in our near _or far_ future.”

Kanaya let out an exaggerated sigh of relief at that. “That’s good to hear. Trolls don’t really ever stop growing as far as I’m aware, and I know that your species tends to shrink after a certain age. It would be uncomfortably strange to have to carry around a grub-sized version of you, while I grow ever more tall and feral.”

“That would make certain things difficult,” Rose agreed vaguely, and Roxy roared into laughter at her daughter/mother’s vulgar sass as Kanaya’s face glowed a dark shade of green.

Jade caught Jane staring off in the distance with a torn expression. Jade poked her genetic clone’s shoulder to get her attention.

That startled Jane a bit, and a hint of color filled her cheeks. “Oh, sorry,” she apologized, “I didn’t mean to space out like that. It’s just…” She glanced back over, and Jade followed her gaze to Calliope and Gamzee. The two were in the corner, immersed in conversation. “The clown… Gamzee? Jade, you told me to save him. Not that I think we should have left him behind, really. But is it really safe to leave him… unshackled, like that?”

That wasn’t a question Jade knew the answer to, but she knew who to ask. “Equius knows the most about Gamzee, since they shared the same mind for a while,” she pointed out, “You should ask him.”

Jane moved to her knees, about to do so.

“You could ask me,” Roxy jumped into the conversation.

“What do you know about Gamzee?” Rose asked, putting her plate aside and inching forward. “Did you speak to him recently?”

Now Roxy was the center of attention. A few nearby people had ceased their talking to listen by this point, as well. Gamzee’s presence in the room was still highly controversial, and no one knew how to talk about it. 

“Uh.” Roxy faltered for a fraction of a second. “I don’t know _him_ , personally, but I know a fair bit _of_ him, thanks to you, Rose. Or, well, my mom version of you.” 

“My alternate self left you information about Gamzee?” Rose’s expression was either concerned or surprised. Jade couldn’t be sure.

“In a sense.” Roxy uncaptchalogued a book from her sylladex, and it landed squarely on her lap. She lifted it up, front cover facing her gradually expanding audience. It read _Complacency of the Learned_ , and she took a deep breath before launching into a long-winded explanation.

“I realized you left me a lot of information in fiction form,” Roxy began, speaking quickly, “About the game, and the people I would meet. The main character, Calmasis, is a stand in for Calliope and Caliborn. Androgynous, powerful, and being the main protagonist, you were trying to warn me about what was to come. I don’t know how alt-you knew, but it’s obvious you knew something, and it becomes clearer the more connections I make! And Gamzee has his own character stand-in.” Roxy hugged the novel to her chest. “I named my cat after him: Frigglish.”

The name was not unfamiliar to Rose. “I had a Frigglish in my novel as well,” she marveled out loud, “I wonder how many differences there were between my novel and my alter ego’s. What happened to Frigglish, in her version?”

“Nothing good, really,” Roxy admitted, “I mean, it started out okay. He was a wonderful wizard. Not always the brightest, but funny and really, really nice. But when Calmasis cursed him, he gradually grew more and more violent and animalistic, until he could no longer speak. He had such a tragic end. Anyway – the way Gamzee acted that one time, foaming at the mouth, jaw stretched as far as it could go, eyes flashing, making inhuman noises… It reminded me of how you described Frigglish’s final rage outburst. And then with Karkat babbling about how goofy and _sweet_ he used to be, before flipping out, for no discernable reason… I thought it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“I confirmed all of this with Dave, later, of course.” Roxy took a sip of juice, and smiled. “Gamzee messaged him, back when he first fell under evil influences. He admitted that the real villain was the soul residing within Dirk’s puppet… Lord English!”

The room was quiet for a moment, as people took in Roxy’s words.

“You wrote Frigglish as a tragic character, Rose,” Roxy finished in as a final plea, “someone to be pitied, not hated. You wouldn’t have painted him in a sympathetic light if you wanted me to be wary of his real life doppelgänger.” 

Rose watched Roxy for a long moment, and then a warm smile crossed her face. “Y’know, I always liked the guy, myself. We talked sometimes, on the meteor. He was strange and secretive, and he phrased his words in vulgar ways, but I never felt afraid of him. I felt sorry for him, in fact. Perhaps those feelings carried over to my post-scratch self.”

Jade listened to the Lalonde girls talk about Gamzee, and thought back on her own few interactions with the guy. It had been before the game, back when the trolls were on a mission to harass her. He wasn’t very good at it. In fact, Gamzee talked more about how he was going to harass her than actually doing any harassing. But Jade had dealt with Karkat long enough to fear all the trolls, even the ones that were genuinely nice to her. Jade remembered Nepeta’s many attempts to befriend her, and smiled to herself.

As Jade reminisced, her gaze settled on a pair of nubby horns in the crowd a couple of yards away. If anyone got the right to judge Gamzee’s right to a second chance, it would be Karkat.

As though he could sense her gaze, Karkat turned his head and met Jade’s eyes. Jade sent him a quick text.

meet me in the kitchen??

\--

The kitchen had a thin layer of dust on the counters and table. There were even a couple of spider webs in the corners. Like so many other rooms in Jade’s childhood home, it looked abandoned. Jade made a mental note to schedule a cleaning day. She didn’t want this place to remind her of everything she had left behind, but of all the friends and memories she had gained.

“You wanted to talk in private?” Karkat was the first one to speak.

“Yeah.” Jade turned to face him and hopped up to sit on the edge of the table. 

Ever since they had reunited after the three year trip through the yellow yard, Jade and Karkat had developed a relationship that neither could accurately define. They weren’t “going out”, whatever that phrase meant anymore. But they did flirt. They flirted in a way that suggested something might develop between them in the future. Or maybe not. Jade wasn’t an expert on romance. And even though Karkat was, (or said he was) she was pretty sure he didn’t know how serious their flirting was, either.

Karkat stepped closer to Jade as she played with her fingers and put her thoughts together. “Do you want to share what the fuck it is you wanted to tell me?” Karkat teased her often.

“Nah, I decided to keep it to myself.” Jade knew how to tease him back. He was close enough to kiss her, she thought.

Karkat put a hand on Jade’s wrist. This was new. Jade decided that she liked it. “It’s about Gamzee, isn’t it?” Karkat’s gaze was intense, focused straight into her eyes. “I’m not stupid. Every fucking body and their lusus is talking about the guy. And no one will get off their ass and actually _say it_ , but everyone is expecting me to make some big final call on the matter.”

His words sounded bitter, and that wasn’t what Jade wanted. She took a shot in the dark, and put one of her hands over his, so that it was sandwiched between her palm and arm. His flesh was feverish, it was so warm. And the texture of his skin was different than a human’s. Leathery and dry, but with a thin, almost undetectable layer of fuzziness. Despite all their similarities, trolls were still so different in a lot of ways. Their eyes were larger, shaped differently. Their nails were denser, and the color of corn. And their hair was so thick and nowhere near as soft. 

And they could be so different, even troll to troll. Feferi and Eridan had bioluminescent freckles, and skin that was smooth and completely hairless. And their features looked as though they had been shaped after their lusus’s. Karkat had the relatively flat, round features of his crab custodian. Gamzee’s face and neck were unnervingly long and narrow, like a goat. And Nepeta’s face resembled a cat’s more than it did a human’s.

If Jade was being completely honest, she would have said that there was something thrilling about Karkat’s feralness. If Dave could read her mind, he would be berating her for being “furry trash”. (As if he hadn’t dated reptilian-like Terezi for two years.)

“Jade,” Karkat said, “Speak to me, please.”

“Stop being so impatient, I’m just thinking!” Jade stuck her tongue out at him, trying to lighten the tense atmosphere. “Usually I’m the impatient one, jeez.” 

After taking another pause just to annoy Karkat, Jade knew what she wanted to say. “Gamzee isn’t your responsibility,” she told Karkat, straight and to the point, “I don’t think you should be expected to make any final call about him, if you don’t want to. But I know you still love him.”

Karkat immediately opened his mouth. Jade shushed him with a single finger against his lips. It may have been her imagination, but she imagined he leaned forward into her touch.

“Please don’t do that thing where you piss and moan and deny something while making a million Freudian slips that prove that the opposite is actually the truth.” Karkat’s lip twitched into something resembling a smile, if for a fraction of a second. Jade couldn’t help but beam back at him. “Please,” Jade said, “I’m no master of romance, but I have great intuition. I can hear it in your voice whenever you say his name. He hurt you, a lot. You still feel that pain, a year later.”

When Jade pulled her finger back, she expected a good old Vantas shitfest was in order. But Karkat only shrugged back at her.

“Say you’re right,” Karkat said, “So… now what? Do I just waltz right on over and be like, Hey Gamzee, you fucking smashed my soul into oblivion when you broke off our moirallegiance out of nowhere, but turns out you may have not actually meant it at the time, so how about we give this thing another shot?”

There were faded sounds of footsteps nearby. Jade leaned forward so she could whisper to Karkat. “I didn’t say you should hop back into a relationship with him,” Jade told Karkat, “Just. Talk to him.”

Karkat’s breath was unbelievably warm on Jade’s face. He smelled lightly of butter. 

“Okay,” Karkat replied. His hands were on the counter, on either side of Jade. Jade hadn’t even noticed the change in his posture until his thumb brushed her thigh by accident. It was an embarrassingly intimate position for him to be in.

“This is weird,” Jade verbalized her thoughts as soon as they popped into her mind, “the fact that we’re discussing your ex, and the possibility of the two of you reconnecting. And I want to—”

She didn’t have to say “kiss you”. Karkat beat her to the punch. He pressed forward, tilting his face so he could lay a soft smooch on top of her lips. 

“Welcome to quadrant romance,” Karkat chuckled, and he kissed her again.


End file.
